TheBeege

@TheBeege@lemmy.world

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I have unlimited cellular data on my phone but not if I use it as a hotspot.⁩ ⁨⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It was a bad explanation, assuming you had knowledge of network infrastructure things, but it does make sense. I’ll explain things if you’re interested.

  Net neutrality is the idea that ISPs must treat all content providers equally. Your phone is not a content provider (most likely. You could run a web server on your phone, but… no). YouTube, Netflix, Facebook, TikTok, and your weird uncle’s WordPress site are content providers. Without net neutrality, ISPs can say, “Hey YouTube, people request a ton of traffic from you on our network. Pay up or we’ll slow down people’s connections to you.” The “neutrality” part means that ISPs must be neutral towards content providers, not discriminating against them for being high demand by consumers.

  For the L1 and L2 part, that’s the networking infrastructure. The connection to your home is just tiny cables. I don’t recall how many layers there are, but it’s just “last mile” infrastructure. The network infrastructure between regions of the country or across the ocean are giant, giant cables managed by internet service providers you’ve never heard of. They’re the kind of providers that connect AT&T to Comcast. These are considered L1 or L2 providers. The data centers of giant companies, like Google for YouTube’s case, often pay these L1 or L2 providers to plug directly into their data centers. Why? Those providers are using the biggest, fastest cables to ferry bits and bytes across the planet. You might be pulling gigs from YouTube, but YouTube is putting out… shit, I don’t even know. Is there a terabyte connection? Maybe even petabyte? That sounds crazy. I dunno, I failed Google’s interview question where they asked me to estimate how much storage does Google Drive use globally. Anyway, I hope that gives you an idea of what L1 and L2 providers are.

  I’m not a network infrastructure guy, though. If someone who actually knows what they’re talking about has corrections, I’d love to learn where I’m wrong

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago⁩:

  Seems so to me. I’m on lemmy. I can see it just fine